Top 10 June 2018 Festivals

The second winter edition of Freedom Time aims to turn the humble, dusty confines of Coburg Velodrome into a cornucopia of projection and installation. Rather than focusing on an endless succession of marquee names playing from a single stage, the organisers have "thrown the axe at the main stage ritual" by enlisting three crews to curate their own musical niches. Melbourne's favourite sons Sleep D enlist the likes of Joe Claussell and Kuniyuki Takahashi for their Butter Sessions stage, while Wax'o Paradiso turn to the dark side with Dopplereffekt's electroid space explorations and Veronica Vasicaka's minimal wave. The pick of the bunch, however, might be Music From Memory, who've managed to pull together an all-star cast of DJs and live acts pushing obscure and mystical flavours of dance music.

Raving in a Cold War-era bunker seems like the kind of thing that could only happen around Berlin. Her Damit, a festival returning for its second edition, aims to bring new life to an underground complex built for the GDR's Ministry Of The Interior. Just like at the repurposed factories and power plants housing clubs in the German capital, guests at Her Damit will dance to pounding techno (Norman Nodge, Kobosil) and jacking house (Roman Flügel, Eris Drew) in huge concrete rooms soundtracked by some the world's most exciting DJs.

RA Pick: Dance to the Motherbeat from Eris Drew, a party-rocking DJ from Chicago who's finally caught the attention of audiences abroad.

Three great crews combine when Rush Hour, Red Light Radio and The Rest Is Noise come together to host Strange Sounds From Beyond, which this year expands to two days for the first time. Held at Noorderlicht, a creative space at the NDSM Wharf, the first weekend-long edition of the festival welcomes around 50 acts pushing left-field beats, ranging from the laser-sharp electro pushed by the likes of Dopplereffekt and I-F to the obscure house and disco of local heroes Antal, DJ Marcelle and Young Marco. It seems like Amsterdam has a mega-rave every weekend, which only makes intimate festivals like Strange Sounds From Beyond more special.

RA Pick: DJ Marcelle is a homegrown favourite whose oddball sound is making waves outside Amsterdam. Catch her on home turf.

Sky-high rents, endless bureaucracy, severe noise restrictions—all these things conspire to make London a difficult place to throw a great festival. But difficult doesn't mean impossible. Junction 2, the annual one-dayer from local promoter LWE, is a shining example of how, with enough experience and ambition, it's possible to give London's house and techno scene the festival it deserves. This year, to compliment the spectacular site, bespoke production and powerhouse soundsystems, the team has cobbled together another eye-watering lineup, with slots for LSD, Len Faki, Dixon, Tale Of Us, Nina Kraviz, Joy Orbison and Carl Cox, who'll play back-to-back with Adam Beyer for the first time ever.

Field Day finished its 2017 edition with a spring in its step, thanks to a raft of inspired performances and a main-stage blowout from Aphex Twin. The London festival takes that energy into 2018 as it descends on a new venue, Brockwell Park, following more than a decade at Victoria Park. The lineup for this year serves a reminder as to why Field Day remains a vital institution. Having teamed up with the likes of Dimensions, CRACK and The Hydra (as well as Resident Advisor), the festival has crafted a two-day bill of music as eclectic as it is modern, ranging from Fever Ray and Erykah Badu to Madlib, Thundercat and Jeff Mills.

Last year, Belfast's AVA expanded from one day to two, a sure sign that things were going well. This year's tell is the move to a new, bigger venue, S13 Warehouse, a mammoth space that at one point in the '90s was the largest of its kind in the UK. As Stephen Titmus pointed out, what makes AVA special isn't its length or its size or even its lineup—it's the thousands of young, often shirtless ravers who help whip up one of the best festival atmospheres in the world. In 2018, they'll be dancing to sets from a mix of Irish heroes and international stars, from Bicep, Saoirse and Mano Le Tough to Hunee, Helena Hauff and KiNK.

RA Pick: All eyes are on Larry Heard, who'll be making his Belfast debut.

You know a festival must be special when rain is a recurring theme and thousands of people still flock there religiously every year. Gottwood, like Glastonbury, wears that badge proudly, confident in the knowledge that, when the sun does eventually come out, the vibe will be glorious. A lot of that has to do with the venue, Carreglwyd Estate, a charming Georgian country house with lush grounds and a beautiful lake. Combine the breathtaking natural setting with music by the likes of Andrew Weatherall, Ben UFO, Sonja Moonear, Commix, Willow, Hunee and dozens more, and you've got a recipe for a good time that's as old as the hills.

RA Pick: Zip is picky about which festivals he plays, so it says a lot that this year's edition will be his fourth in a row.

With each passing year, Terraforma is more and more a jewel of the European festival season. The secluded, sustainable operation in the woods outside Milan is beginning to elicit the type of reverence usually reserved for something like Labyrinth, but it packs more musical variety into its three days than most of its contemporaries. Festival mainstays include the likes of Donato Dozzy and Rabih Beaini, but 2018 also provides the hyper-modern edges of Nkisi, Lanark Artefax and Byetone. Then there's a raft of free-wheeling, wide-ranging DJs on offer, such as Powder and PLO Man, cutting edge rhythms from Batu and DON'T DJ, and Jeff Mills' towering techno heights.

"The Adriatic Love Affair Continues." So reads a message at the bottom of the flyer for this year's Love International, and truer words were never spoken. Since the formative years of The Garden Festival a decade ago, Tisno has become one of the most beloved destinations in dance music, thanks both to its sun-dappled location on the Adriatic coast, and to the exceptional festivals that crops up there every summer. These days, Love International—the self-described "spiritual successor to The Garden Festival"—is leading the charge, with a week of house and disco's créme de la créme—think Avalon Emerson, Bicep, Intergalactic Gary, Joy Orbison—booked on boats, beaches and one legendary open-air nightclub, Barbarella's Discotheque. If you can think of a better way to spend a week-long holiday, we'd love to hear it.

To mark their 25th anniversary, Sónar, the annual music and technology festival in Barcelona, transmitted music into outer space—more specifically, they beamed compositions from Autechre, Nina Kraviz, Matmos and others to a planet called GJ 237b, 12.4 light years away from Earth. This should give you an idea of how seriously they're taking their 25th birthday, something you could also tell from the bill for this year's festival. The 2018 program touches on nearly every distant corner of the electronic music universe and beyond, from SOPHIE to DJ Stingray to Motor City Drum Ensemble, onto Modeselektor and Thom Yorke, and further onto Wiley, Diplo and Gorillaz. Ryiuchi Sakamoto will play with Alva Noto for one of only three performances of a new audiovisual show called Two. 2manydjs will team up with James Murphy for daily sessions in the Despacio soundsystem; Murphy will also take the stage with LCD Soundsystem. Since it began a quarter century ago, Sónar has managed to capture in each of its lineups much of the current electronic music zeitgeist. This year they've done that better than ever.

RA Pick: Lanark Artefax playing live for RA's takeover of the SonarLab stage on the Saturday.